The production headquarters on the set of the ÒThe Last Meal,Ó a zombie-themed short that was filmed in Von Ormy. On the phone is Production Manager Michael Esquivel. Zombie in front is Randall Hilger, an actor and student at Palo Alto College.

Photo By Courtesy photo

Employees of makeup company Cthululu's Den at work turning actors into zombies for ÒThe Last Meal,Ó a zombie-themed short that was filmed in Von Ormy.

The Golden Age of Von Ormy filmmaking has begun.

Friday night saw the world premiere of “The Last Meal,” a zombie-themed short that was filmed in Von Ormy, made by locals and produced by the town's nascent film commission.

It's the first of several movies to be released or still on the drawing board in this quiet farm town.

Other South Texas towns celebrate their agricultural heritage with festivals honoring the harvesting of pecans, strawberries and peaches to promote local farming.

The Von-Zomb festival, instead, celebrated the nightmarish harvesting of fake flesh and brains to promote a movie.

“Someone asked me why we're having a zombie festival,” the mayor quipped. “I told them they aren't any fruits left.”

Most cities create an industrial foundation and then scour the nation begging for manufacturing plants to relocate. Others build industrial parks and hope factories will magically pop up.

Von Ormy, a predominantly Latino farming community of 1,100 located in the southwest corner of Bexar County, decided to go to the movies. With the festival and the commission, Von Ormy, incorporated five years ago, takes a major step forward.

It's a bold move. This is farm country, and the laid-back lifestyle makes it hard to imagine that the town would embrace that level of innovation. But Von Ormy became the de facto Farm Film Capitol of South Texas through a confluence of unusual events.

The back story, as Hollywood people like to say, began in 2009 when then-teenaged Emmanuel Delfin made a short film for his journalism class at nearby Southwest High. He liked the process and asked the school's faculty if they would start a film class. He recruited other kids to join his cause, and the class was formed in 2010.

The class lit a creative fire under several students. There now are a half-dozen Von Ormy kids, including Delfin, studying film at colleges all over the state and one student who is studying acting at Buffalo University in New York.

When the mayor heard about the town's young filmmakers, there was a metaphorical crescendo of music as he and Delfin came to the same conclusion: Make movies in Von Ormy.

The mayor, also a local attorney, created the commission six months ago and chairs it. Delfin and Brian Ramirez, studying technical theater at Palo Alto College, were appointed to it, as was Austin entertainment attorney Roberto “R.C.” Rondero de Mosier.

The commission's goal, said Martinez de Vara, is to jumpstart and nurture a pollution-free, profitable industry.

Locals will invest emotionally in it and local businesses will profit from it. New businesses will form. The movies, he said, will help promote the city's brand worldwide.

And in the process, the commission can secure the town's future by creating new jobs for young people, giving them a reason to stay.

It's already working.

“The teachers in film school tell us that when we graduate, (we should) stay in Austin or go to New York or Los Angeles,” Delfin said. “But if I do that, I'll be one of thousands trying to get work. If I stay here, I'm one of a handful of people making movies.”

The Texas film industry is sizable. From 2007-2012, producers and production companies spent $743 million making films in Texas, said Heather Page, director of the Texas Film Commission. She said the total from direct, indirect and induced spending comes to $1.3 billion for those years.

In addition, she said, the industry has created 10,800 full-time film professionals in the state.

Von Ormy's film company, however, runs on a shoestring budget. Everything is donated or borrowed. Actors and crew work for free.

The zombie movie, for example, required lots of extras. Delfin, also editor of the town's weekly paper, put out a casting call for locals. Like zombies, they swarmed at the chance.

Friends from Austin worked behind the camera. A Von Ormy native, attending Incarnate Word, added the computer-generated special effects.

The commission is a nonprofit chartered by the city, Martinez de Vara said. The commission, in turn, had to create a separate entity — Studio V — to own the copyrights for each film.

Beyond the zombie movie, a full-length documentary of the city already is in the can. A documentary on the local volunteer fire department is under way, Delfin said, and there are 12 other scripts queued up, ready to go.

Next up is a movie based on recent UFO sightings in the Eagle Ford Shale. Delfin, who'll direct, said it will be a short “mockumentary,” made in the “found footage” style of recent horror films.

The commission already is lobbying to get their short films on the independent movie festival circuit. Each film has been scripted and filmed so that, if a studio wants to invest, the existing film can be expanded with new footage, Delfin said.

It's a peculiar turn of events for Von Ormy.

“We couldn't have planned it this well,” said Ramirez, one of the student commissioners. “It's as if everything just fell into place.”